Video conferencing has become more and more popular due to the emergence of readily available high speed Internet and reduced prices for high quality web cameras. Videoconferencing is an important collaboration tool that allows people from different locations to work together while making both verbal and non-verbal cues available to the other party.
There are, however, a number of issues with current video conferencing systems that impact user experiences and collaboration effectiveness. One big issue is privacy. From time to time, a user may want to temporarily leave a video conference to conduct a side conversation with a colleague, to check emails, or to find a document in a drawer. This can be easily done in an audio only conference by turning off (muting) the microphone, which is not noticed by remote participants. However, this is not the case for videoconferencing because a meeting participant's activity is constantly captured by the camera and shown on other people's displays. The lack of privacy sometimes deters meeting participants from using videoconferencing, despite its substantial added value of non-verbal cues.